Lee Child - Bad Luck and Trouble

Incorrect.

“Four down,” she said. “Not his puppy.”

She tried Panama .

Incorrect.

“Five down.” She tried Brooklyn .

The screen went blank and the hard drive chattered.

“Six down,” she said. “Not his old hood. You’re zip for six, Reacher.”

The second unit clattered into the trash and she plugged in the third.

“Ideas?”

“Your turn. I seem to have lost my touch.”

“What about his old service number?”

“I doubt it. He was a words guy, not a numbers guy. And for me anyway my number was the same as my Social Security number. Same for him, probably, which would make it too obvious.”

“What would you use?”

“Me? I am a numbers guy. Top row of the keyboard, all in a line, easy to get to. No typing skills required.”

“What number would you use?”

“Six characters? I’d probably write out my birthday, month, day, year, and find the nearest prime number.” Then he thought for a second and said, “Actually, that would be a problem, because there would be two equally close, one exactly seven less and one exactly seven more. So I guess I’d use the square root instead, rounded to three decimal places. Ignore the decimal point, that would give me six numbers, all different.”

“Weird,” Neagley said. “I think we can be sure Franz wouldn’t do anything like that. Probably nobody else in the world would do anything like that.”

“Therefore it would be a good password.”

“What was his first car?”

“Some piece of shit, probably.”

“But guys like cars, right? What was his favorite car?”

“I don’t like cars.”

“Think like him, Reacher. Did he like cars?”

“He always wanted a red Jaguar XKE.”

“Would that be worth a try?”

A man of interests and enthusiasms. Full of affections and loyalties.

“Maybe,” Reacher said. “It’s certainly going to be something special to him. Something talismanic, something that would give him a feeling of warmth just recalling the word. Either an early role model or a longstanding object of desire or affection. So the XKE might work.”

“Should I try it? We’ve only got six left.”

“I’d try it for sure if we had six hundred left.”

“Wait a minute,” Neagley said. “What about what Angela told us? The way he kept on saying you do not mess with the special investigators?”

“That would make a hell of a long password.”

“So break it down. Either special investigators , or do not mess .”

A memory like an elephant . Reacher nodded. “We had a good time back then, basically, didn’t we? So remembering the old days might have given him a warm feeling. Especially stuck out there in Culver City, busy doing nothing much. People enjoy nostalgia, don’t they? Like that song, ‘The Way We Were.’”

“It was a movie, too.”

“There you go. It’s a universal feeling.”

“Which should we try first?”

Reacher heard Charlie in his mind, the little boy’s piping treble: You do not mess .

“ Do not mess ,” he said. “Nine letters.”

Neagley typed donotmess .

Hit enter .

Incorrect.

“Shit,” she said.

She typed specialinvestigators . Held her finger over the enter key.

“That’s very long,” Reacher said.

“Yes or no?”

“Try it.”

Incorrect.

Neagley said, “Damn,” and went quiet.

Charlie was still in Reacher’s mind. And his tiny chair, with the neat branded name at the top. He could see Franz’s steady hand at work. He could smell the smoking wood. A gift, father to son. Probably intended to be the first of many. Love, pride, commitment.

“I like Charlie,” he said.

“Me too,” Neagley said. “He’s a cute kid.”

“No, for the password.”

“Too obvious.”

“He didn’t take this kind of stuff very seriously. He was going through the motions. Easier to put in any old thing than to reprogram the software to get around it.”

“Still too obvious. And he had to be taking it seriously. At least this time. He was in big trouble and he was mailing stuff to himself.”

“So it could be a double bluff. It’s obvious but it’s the last thing anyone would think of trying. That makes for a very effective password.”

“Possible but unlikely.”

“What are we going to find on there anyway?”

“Something we really need to see.”

“Try Charlie for me.”

Neagley shrugged and typed Charlie .

Hit enter .

Incorrect.

The hard disc spun up and the memory unit erased itself.

“Nine down,” Neagley said. She pitched the third unit into the trash and plugged the fourth one in. The last one. “Three to go.”

Reacher asked, “Who did he love before Charlie?”

“Angela,” Neagley said. “Way too obvious.”

“Try it.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m a gambler.”

“We’re down to our last three chances.”

“Try it,” he said again.

She typed Angela .

Hit enter .

Incorrect.

“Ten down,” she said. “Two to go.”

“What about Angela Franz?”

“That’s even worse.”

“What about her unmarried name?”

“I don’t know what it was.”

“Call her and ask.”

“Are you serious?”

“At least let’s find out.”

So Neagley thumbed through her notebook and found the number and fired up her cell phone. Introduced herself again. Small-talked for a moment. Then Reacher heard her ask the question. He didn’t hear Angela’s answer. But he saw Neagley’s eyes widen a fraction, which for her was about the same thing as falling on the floor with shock.

She hung up.

“It was Pfeiffer,” she said.

“Interesting.”

“Very.”

“Are they related?”

“She didn’t say.”

“So try it. It’s a perfect twofer. He feels good twice over and doesn’t have to feel disloyal at all.”

Neagley typed Pfeiffer .

Hit enter .

Incorrect.

The room was hot and stuffy. No air in it. And it seemed to have gotten smaller. Neagley said, “Eleven down. One to go. Do or die. Last chance.”

Reacher asked, “What happens if we don’t do anything?”

“Then we don’t get to see what’s on the file.”

“No, I mean do we have to do it right now? Or can it keep?”

“It’s not going anywhere.”

“So we should take a break. Come back to it later. One to go, we’ve got to pay attention.”

“Weren’t we already?”

“Clearly not the right kind of attention. We’ll go out to East LA and look for Swan. If we find him, he might have ideas. If not, then at least we’ll come back to this fresh.”

Neagley called down to the valet station again and ten minutes later they were in the Mustang heading east on Wilshire. Through Wilshire Center, through Westlake, through a dogleg south that took them straight through MacArthur Park. Then north and east on the Pasadena Freeway, past the concrete bulk of Dodger Stadium all alone in acres of empty parking. Then deep into a rat’s nest of surface streets bounded by Boyle Heights, Monterey Park, Alhambra, and South Pasadena. There were science parks and business parks and strip malls and old housing and new housing. The curbs were thick with parked cars and there was traffic everywhere, moving slow. A brown sky. Neagley had an austere Rand McNally map in the glove box. Looking at it was like looking at the surface of the earth from fifty miles up. Reacher squinted and followed the faint gray lines. Matched the street names on signposts to the street names on the map and pinpointed specific junctions about thirty seconds after they blew through them. He had his thumb on New Age’s location and steered Neagley toward it in a wide ragged spiral.